Dec 29, 2002 02:23 PM
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(Updated Dec 29, 2002 02:26 PM)
Right from the time of the Great Renaissance, revolutions has provided vital breakthroughs. Such milestones have more of negativity at the outset but in the long run it would turn out to be the positivity that would have helped mankind. Improvisation of this positivity would be the achievement that would herald a whole new beginning. Wait a minute! What has happened to you Karthik? Why are you boring people at the fag end of a wonderful year? As I ask this question to myself, let me clear things out here.
The MP3 revolution might have acted as a destabilizing storm for the music industry, but it spawned a whole new world of multimedia programming. MP3 is an audio compression technology that lets you pack one hour of CD-quality digital audio in just 32MB of storage space. This advantage makes it extremely easy to distribute MP3 music over the Internet and other low-bandwidth networks. MP3 is a compressed digital audio, and you need a de-compression software to play it. Such software is called an MP3 software. Music freaks (me first) would definitely want more out of an MP3 player, than just playing MP3 files.
So, whenever you choose an MP3 player, you are bound to have certain vital expectations from it. The one, that satisfies almost all such expectation will be the winner. And the winner in my opinion, without doubt, got to be none other than the famous WinAMP. It is the oldest one of all and the most widely used, if I am right. So, here are my thoughts on this wonderful MP3 player.
The name of being the most feature-rich player going to WinAMP can only be credited to its open architecture. One can extend the players capabilities the way you want, and the possibilities are endless. It can be remote controlled by various devices - ranging from a simple joystick to an infrared remote control. It can act as a SHOUTcast internet radio broadcaster and you can use any amount of DSP plug-ins to add effects to the audio. You can even use it as a DJ mixing software, a CD-Ripper or an Encoder.
Okay. Let me put some more vital aspects that has made WinAMP, the clear winner. Firstly, WinAMP is easy on memory and CPU usage. Even the latest versions don't occupy more than 12 MB of memory and you see that the percentage of CPU usage is very very low. More so, what makes WinAMP special is that you can simultaneously run other applications and still maintain the speed very effectively.
Secondly, we have the all important Features. No big hype and hoopla. No show off whatsoever. The basic set of features for an MP3 player like volume control, a seek bar for rewind and forward, navigation controls, a playlist editor, a graphic equilizer, spectrum analyzer and song time/length are all out there for grabs. You don't have to search for anything for they just are present right out there. I mean, the intuitiveness of WinAMP is awesome. More so, WinAMP supports more formats than any other MP3 player. WinAMP comes with some really special features like DJ mixing, special sound effects ( with 28 different music mode options), WMA encoder and above all else, the very effective DSP architecture. What more, you have tons of plug-ins and skins.
Thirdly, the most important and vital reason for WinAMP to click is that it is available for free download at http://www.winamp.com . Since, WinAMP is a very supportive software, the download becomes very simple in any given module. So here we are, with WinAMP emerging a big winner.
If there are some big time competitors to WinAMP, then they got to be Windows Media Player, Music Match Jukebox, MJ Studio, Sonique, FreeAMP and Destiny Media. But the feel good factor, user friendly nature, availability and mouth to mouth popularity has kept WinAMP above, at the top.
So giving my verdict, I have only one thing to say. If you take a survey, you'll find that out of 10 MP3 player users, 8 would be using WinAMP. This by itself proves that WinAMP is the best MP3 software around and hence I would highly recommend this amazing software to every single MP3 player user for you won't get a better bargain than this.
